Posts

Lens on California’s Housing Boom, Population Decline

/0 Comments/in /by

Michael Lens, associate professor of urban planning and public policy at UCLA Luskin, spoke to the Los Angeles Times about an increase in housing construction during the pandemic along with a decline in population in California. “When it takes a decade of really massive economic growth in this state for housing production to catch up to the pre-recession levels, that says as much about the depths of our production crisis as it does about some kind of recent victory,” Lens said. He went on to explain that housing unaffordability and the pandemic played significant roles in reducing population growth in recent years, but the state has a long way to go to meet its housing needs. “We expect more equitable and more productive housing construction over the next decade,” he said, “but it’s going to take some time and take some diligence on the part of the state.”

Read the article

 

Lens Defends Senate Bill 50 Upzoning Proposal

/0 Comments/in /by

Michael Lens, associate professor of urban planning and public policy, expressed his support for Senate Bill 50 in a Los Angeles Daily News article about the controversial bill. If passed, SB50 would override local restrictions against multi-family housing, allowing developers to construct larger buildings or condos near transportation hubs in a process known as upzoning. Many have expressed opposition to the bill, arguing that it would destroy neighborhoods without necessarily addressing housing affordability. Critics of SB50 argue that there is little empirical evidence to support the relationship between upzoning, increased construction and lower housing prices. Lens points to the long-standing trend of downzoning to protect single-family neighborhoods, arguing that “there is an absence of evidence mainly because we don’t have a lot of experience upzoning anything like this.” In defense of SB50, Lens explains that he “doesn’t believe it’s his right to guarantee that a building down the street isn’t multi-family housing.”

Read the article